Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina is Out but Her Legacy of State-Sponsored Violence Will Linger Much Longer

Prior to her ousting, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presided over not just authoritarian entrenchment but a series of state-perpetrated mass killings that should have triggered national reckoning – and international condemnation.

There were at least three major blood stains during her tenure: the indiscriminate firing on protesters following the Sayedee verdict in 2013, the brutal military crackdown at Shapla Chattar in May of the same year and the lethal suppression of demonstrators during the “Long July” protests.

Each of these episodes was marked by an open use of force against unarmed civilians, carried out by state security forces acting with apparent political direction – and without consequence.

And then there was the Pilkhana attack.

Though not ordered by her government, the gruesome massacre of army officers at the Bangladesh Rifles headquarters in 2009 remains shrouded in questions – most disturbingly, about what the state chose not to do.

Whether through negligence, indifference or calculated political restraint, the regime’s passivity in the face of that catastrophe stands as a form of complicity.

What’s more damning than the violence itself is the silence that followed. The silence of political parties too busy jockeying for power. The silence of civil society is too paralysed – or too compromised – to act.

The silence of the public, disoriented by propaganda and repression, unsure where to turn.

This collective failure has not merely emboldened Sheikh Hasina – it has licensed her. It has allowed her to unleash what now functions as a state-aligned militia, operating both in uniform and in plain clothes, to enforce loyalty through fear.

Each act of state violence becomes easier, more open, more shameless.

Bangladesh did not arrive at this moment by accident. We arrived here because the institutions meant to restrain power – press, parliament, protest – were dismantled, and because those with the means to resist often chose comfort over confrontation.

There comes a point when inaction becomes complicity – Bangladesh was long past that point.

How did we reach here?

Sheikh Hasina’s descent into open violence did not begin in Dhaka but it eventually arrived there, more brutal and brazen than ever before.

What began with the quiet slaughter of protesters in peripheral towns after the Sayedee verdict was soon brought to the heart of the capital. The carnage came to Motijheel, the city’s commercial centre, where armoured vehicles and tear gas became instruments of civic policy. Then it spread even further – to once-untouchable neighbourhoods, areas never meant to feel the sting of state brutality.

In Baridhara, often referred to as Dhaka’s “Green Zone,” residents watched in horror as the road from Badda to Rampura transformed into a war zone.

From balconies and drawing rooms, they saw their city overtaken by military-grade repression, like spectators to a siege they had thought only others would endure.

In most functioning democracies, such bloodshed in peacetime would be enough to dissolve a ruling party – perhaps even to end its existence. 

The idea that a government could use lethal force so casually, and so publicly, would have sent it to the political graveyard. However, Bangladesh is not most democracies.

Bangladeshis inhabit a country that has normalised everything; where outrage is fleeting, where justice is cosmetic and where brutality becomes just another tool of governance – used, denied, and quietly rewarded. 

The threshold for ethical revulsion has all but vanished, replaced by a culture where any instrument of repression can be justified if it serves political gain or financial interest.

And this failure – this refusal – to hold perpetrators accountable cannot disappear with Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. It will haunt us long even as she’s gone. 

It will linger because impunity is infectious. When a state teaches its rulers that killing civilians carries no price, it invites the next strongman to do the same, only worse.

By not punishing those responsible, by refusing to investigate, indict or even publicly shame them, we have all but invited the next autocrat to write their playbook from this one. 

The blood spilled in Motijheel, Rampura and beyond did not just mark the end of protests, it marked the beginning of a new kind of politics – one rooted in fear, executed through force, and immune to consequence.

The danger now is not only in what has already been done but in what we have made possible.

Nayel Rahman is a Dhaka-based political analyst.